Dennis Cooper

The book has two really special features that made me love it.

(1) The whole thing, narration wise, is a series of forum posts and emails. There is no outside narration or dialogue. I had always imagined something like this could be done, like a book built on texts or social media for example, but had thought it was just too difficult to pull off without it being corny and destined to become heavily outdated. The Sluts really pulls it off with grace by not trivializing the medium (not playing show more it as a joke or ironic or silly), and somehow barely feeling outdated at all, years later.

(2) I loved the way truth and fact were never certainties; instead they were always being distorted and reframed to show entirely new perspectives. I see why people say it was Borgesian, but it reminded me most of Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler…” The book’s plot was essentially a captivating whodunnit without any resolutions, or at least without any resolutions that stood for more than a few pages. It seems like really sharp commentary to present truth and fact conveyed digitally as so inaccessible and unbelievable, whether you’re in extremely niche communities (like the ones in this book) or on the front page of Reddit. It really rings true to my own browsing to never fully feel like I can believe anything I read on the internet. I guess that’s true in real life too, to some extent.

Anyways yes I am comfortably giving this 5 stars. The only thing I have to say is that it is extremely graphic and gory, highly disturbing content. Probably American Psycho or Less Than Zero level or slightly worse.

Thanks to Angie Dutton, who I do not actually know but is my friend on this app, who either recommended the book to me or left a review that convinced me to read it. show less

I think this collections speaks of a dying experience of the gay man so rarely found in the mainstream media today, a presentation where all gays want is marriage or acceptance from the school bullies. These boys sure as hell aren’t the boys from Modern Family or Glee. These are the boys who don’t even believe true love possible, the boys who believe that even if it does exist the only grace and possible attainment of it is in the almost unreachable hookup sex, the one night stands, or show more buried deep behind the abuse of a bad relationship. It’s the boys who watch their crushes from afar at school and who must wait eight years for their grace, which only comes as a lonely blowjob after meeting again in a seedy bar. The boys who are bored by love, don’t believe in its saving power, and wish to annihilate it.

Dennis Cooper scares me with his sexual abuse, rape, necrophilia, cannibalism, pederasty, and murder, but there is no denying that his work portrays all the stuff that gay men feel that people are too afraid to touch--the dirty side of longing, the feelings men get when any feeling of love and self-worth is prohibited, it’s dream love (even in dreams restricted, policed), it’s lust, it’s self-hatred. It’s the loneliest poetry in the world. show less

Cooper is working his usual dark magic, here, but in a new form. Normally something of a minimalist, here he attempts to reverse that trend. In fact, you might think of the titular "Marbled Swarm" as a 180 degree rotation from what Nabokov did with "Lolita"--an attempt to cover a central truth with convoluted sentence work and dense plot layers (some leading nowhere) like a honeycomb covered in bees. It's genius that only he could create. A word of warning, though: as I've said before, this show more is dark, dark magic--not for the faint of heart. But if you want to see an artist who is truly unafraid to dance on the edge (as trite as that sounds), then Cooper is your guy, and this novel is an absolute masterwork. show less

A sickly, brilliant dive into early aughts internet culture and the sex industry, plumbing the depths of commercialized queerness. Cooper is fearless in his form and ruthless in his content, twisting and folding narrative reality in a sharp-confrontation with extreme desire.